What is Pokémon Go?

Pokémon Go is an inescapable force of nature. Building on the giant video game franchise created in the '90s by a Japanese insect collector and game developer,Pokémon Go has become a phenomenon that takes advantage of our nation’s ADD nature, our reliance on smartphones, the warm fuzziness of nostalgia, and our human thirst for escapism.

In a way, playing the game is like giving your brain a warm, relaxing bath. Pokémon Gomakes just one simple and non-aggressive request: Gotta catch 'em all. There is no time limit. There are no consequences. The worst thing that can happen in the game is that a Pokémon escapes a life of living inside a Poké Ball.

It’s not even that great or stunning of a game.

But it’s one nearly everyone you know is playing right now. And, well, you may have some questions about it. That’s understandable. Here are some answers.

1) What is Pokémon Go?

To fully understand Pokémon Go, you have to go back to the canonical beginnings ofPokémon. Around 1990, a video game designer named Satoshi Tajiri began hammering out the concept of Pokémon, which combined his childhood hobby of insect collecting with his love for video games.

"Places to catch insects are rare because of urbanization," Tajiri told Time in 1999. "Kids play inside their homes now, and a lot had forgotten about catching insects. So had I. When I was making games, something clicked and I decided to make a game with that concept."

Six years after Tajiri came up with this initial concept, with the help of Nintendo and designer/illustrator Ken Sugimori (Sugimori drew the initial 151 different Pokémon himself), the first Pokémon game was released on Game Boy.

The word Pokémon itself is the Americanized/Westernized contraction of "pocket monsters" — which, yes, can sound sort of inappropriate — and the original first-person game centered on a young trainer capturing 151 different types of Pokémon, ranging from ones that vaguely resemble turtles (Squirtle) to humanoid ones (Jynx) to the most recognizable Pokémon in the world, Pikachu.

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